Poet's Choice by David Hinton: 'Drinking Wine' by T'ao Ch'ien

Network News

T'ao Ch'ien (365-427) was the first major Chinese poet to speak in a direct personal voice about the full range of his immediate experience. This is the voice that came to typify the Chinese tradition, and it is why classical Chinese poetry has felt so contemporary to American readers. T'ao lived in relative poverty on a quiet farm, but when this poem was written he was living in a nearby village where he encountered the kind of noise that modern urban-dwellers take for granted. For Chinese poets, wine was a way of easing the urge to extract meaning from the world, and what interests me most about this drinking poem is the ending, with its skepticism about language, and all the possibility that offers.